A Devilishly Dark Deal

by Maggie Cox

  Grace Faulkner.

  But it wasn’t just her beauty that had disturbed him. Marco wondered how she had learned that he had grown up in an orphanage when it wasn’t something that he had ever willingly broadcast. A further conversation with her was imperative if he was to impress upon her the folly of repeating that information to the media—even though he knew there were local people who had always known it to be true. Perhaps he had been uncharacteristically foolish in hoping for their loyalty and believing they wouldn’t talk about his past with outsiders? He’d already been through a torrid time with the press … The last thing he needed was some new revelation to hit the headlines. And this one would perhaps be the most difficult for him to face out of all of them.

  His thoughts returned to the image of Grace Faulkner that seemed to be imprinted on his mind. She’d declared that she wasn’t trying to impress him, but inexplicably she had. He’d already telephoned his secretary Martine and asked her to undertake some research on the woman and the charity she supported before he took her phone call tomorrow. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be the first time that a female had behaved dishonourably to win herself the chance of getting close to him … accepted a fee from a newspaper for passing on some invented salacious anecdote about his life for them to print.

  Marco found himself wishing that the girl was unquestionably who she said she was, and that the only reason she had waylaid him was because she wanted his aid for the cause that was apparently so close to her heart. When he’d stood in front of her, so close that gazing into her eyes had been like being dazzled by a sunlit blue lake, she hadn’t flinched or glanced guiltily away. No, she’d stared right back at him as if she had absolutely nothing to hide … as if she was telling him nothing but the truth. What would she think if she knew how seductive and appealing that was? He had dated and bedded some very beautiful women over the years, but their mostly self-seeking natures had not been beautiful.

  Take his ex-girlfriend Jasmine, for example. The fashion model had made the mistake of trying to sue him for breach of his alleged promise to support her when the famous fashion house she’d modelled for hadn’t renewed her contract because she’d preferred to party and get high rather than turn up for work. Marco had made no such promise to her … in fact he had already told her that he was ending their relationship before her illustrious employers had dropped her. The woman had been a liability, but thanks to his lawyers the case had been more or less thrown out of court for a laughable lack of evidence. Shortly after that sorry episode she had sold her lurid little tale to a tabloid for some ludicrous sum, inventing stories of ‘ill treatment’ and making him look like some despicable misogynist.

  That whole sorry debacle had happened over six months ago now, and ever since then Marco had become even more wary and cynical of women’s motives for seeing him. Despite his understandable caution, the fact that Grace Faulkner seemed far more interested in helping others instead of herself definitely made him want to find out more about the angelic-faced beauty, with a soft heart for needy children and the daring to just walk right up to him and present her case as if she had every right in the world to do just that …

  ‘Marco?’

  Joseph was looking decidedly ill at ease, because his boss hadn’t replied to a question he’d asked, and Marco had the vague notion that he’d already addressed him twice. The rest of the board members shifted their gazes uncomfortably. Clearly they weren’t accustomed to their illustrious leader being so distracted.

  Folding his arms across the hand-tailored jacket of his cream linen suit, he allowed an apologetic smile to hijack his usually austere lips. ‘Could you go over that again for me, Joseph? I think I must be a little jet-lagged after flying in from Sydney late last night and I didn’t quite take it all in.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Of course.’ At this amenable explanation, the British director’s shoulders visibly relaxed. ‘I’m sure that all of us here will endeavour to keep the meeting as short as possible in light of the fact that you must be understandably tired after your travels.’

  With a little dip of his head Marco indicated his thanks, making sure to include every one of the well-dressed ensemble in his amicable gaze.

  ‘By the way,’ the other man added, his smile a little awkward, as if he were much happier dealing with matters appertaining to the business rather than making polite conversation with his boss, ‘how does it feel to be back home? It must be at least a couple of years since you were here for any length of time?’

  ‘That’s right … it is.’ His usual guard slammed down into place and Marco deliberately ignored the first part of the question. Home was a concept that even his immense wealth had never been able to make a reality for him. When a man had grown up an orphan, as he had, ‘home’ was just a tantalising dream that was always mockingly out of reach … a fantasy that just wasn’t on the agenda, no matter how much his heart might ache for it to be possible …

  A palatial house or mansion didn’t equal a home in the true sense of the word, although he had several of those round the globe. Lately he’d been working particularly hard, and his plan had been to stay in the Algarve for a few weeks at least, to kick back and take a long overdue rest, but the instant he had recalled his humble beginnings growing up Portugal, the idea suddenly lost most of its appeal. The prospect of spending time alone didn’t sit well with him either. Marco had plenty of acquaintances, but no real friends he could truly be himself around … Even as a child he had never made friends easily. One of the carers at the orphanage had once told him he was a ‘complicated’ little boy. With his child’s logic, he had judged that to mean that he was difficult to love …

  Once more he flipped his pen, hating the sudden prickling of anxiety at the back of his neck and inside his chest—a sign that he was feeling hemmed in, almost trapped. Because for him there was neither solace nor reassurance in revisiting scenes from his past.

  ‘Let’s continue, shall we? I’m sure we are all very busy people with much to accomplish before the day is out, and time is not standing still,’ he announced abruptly.

  Grimacing in embarrassment at his boss’s terse-voiced remarks, Joseph Simonson shuffled the sheaf of papers in front of him and cleared his throat before proceeding …

  Grace’s insides were churning. It was a minute or two away from midday, and three times now she had snatched her shaking hand away from the telephone. Right then the fact that she might be just a conversation away from getting the financial assistance the charity needed to rebuild the children’s home, set up a school and employ a teacher, didn’t seem to help overcome her nerves. Yesterday she’d been fired up … brave … as if neither man nor mountain could stop her from fulfilling her aim of getting what she wanted. Today, after a more or less sleepless night when memories of Marco Aguilar’s piercing dark eyes had frequently disturbed her, she didn’t feel capable of much … let alone feel brave.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’

  Exasperated, she grabbed the receiver from its rest on the kitchen wall and punched out the number she had determinedly memorized, in case by some cruel twist of fate she lost the card.

  On arriving back at the villa yesterday afternoon, Grace had been seriously taken aback when she’d realised the number Marco had given her belonged to his personal mobile. It wasn’t the same as any of the numbers printed in gold on the front of his business card. Now, briefly shutting her eyes, she recalled the shining hopeful faces of the children she had left behind in that feebly constructed orphanage back in Africa and felt a resurgence of passion for helping make things right for them. Marco Aguilar was only a man. He was made of flesh and blood and bone, just as she was, she told herself. It didn’t matter that he wore hand-tailored suits that probably cost the earth, or that he might regularly make it onto the world’s rich lists. That didn’t make him any better than Grace. In this instance they were just two humane people, discussing what needed to be done to help those less fortunate than they were, and she would
hold onto that thought when they spoke.

  The softly purring ringtone in her ear ceased, indicating someone had picked up at the other end.

  ‘Olá?’

  ‘Olá.’

  ‘Mr Aguilar?’

  ‘Ah … is that you, Grace?’

  She hadn’t expected him to address her by her first name, and the sound of it spoken in his highly arresting, accented voice made her insides execute a disorientating cartwheel. Staring out of the opened windows at the sun-baked patio, and the usually inviting deckchair that she’d had to vacate when the heat grew too intense to bear comfortably, Grace nervously smoothed her palm down over the hip of her white linen trousers.

  ‘Yes, it’s me. I presume I’m talking to Marco Aguilar?’

  ‘Just Marco is fine.’

  ‘I wouldn’t presume to—’

  ‘I am inviting you to address me by my first name, Grace, so you are not being presumptuous. How are you today? I trust you are enjoying this glorious weather?’

  ‘I’m … I’m fine, and, yes I am enjoying the weather.’ Threading her fingers through her wheat-coloured hair, Grace grimaced, taken aback that he should address her so amicably and not quite sure about how to proceed. ‘How are you?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘I wasn’t planning on making this conversation that long,’ he commented wryly.

  Colouring hotly, she was glad that he couldn’t see her face right then … just in case he imagined that she was one of those starstruck women who didn’t have the wits to separate fantasy from reality …

  ‘Well, I know you must be a very busy man, so you needn’t worry that I’ll talk your ears off.’ She made a face, thinking that she sounded like some immature schoolgirl with that infantile remark. ‘I promise,’ she added quickly, as if to emphasise the point.

  ‘Talk my ears off?’ Marco echoed, chuckling, ‘I hope you won’t, Grace, because they are extremely useful at times … especially when I’m listening to Mozart or Beethoven.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have said that. It was a stupid comment.’

  ‘Why? Because you think I might lack a sense of humour? I hope I may have the chance to prove you wrong about that.’

  Taken aback once more by such a surprising remark, Grace hardly knew what to say.

  ‘It may surprise you,’ the man on the other end of the line continued, ‘but I have unexpectedly found myself with an entirely free afternoon today. Instead of us talking on the phone, I could send my driver round to where you are staying and get him to bring you back to my house. That would be a much more agreeable way of conducting our conversation don’t you think?’

  She must be dreaming. Confronting him outside the exclusive resort was one thing, and talking to him on the phone was another … but never in her wildest dreams had she envisaged a man like Marco Aguilar inviting her to his house to discuss the charity she was so determined to help—just like that. If she didn’t know better she’d think she was suffering from heatstroke!

  ‘If you—if you really do have the time then, yes … I’m sure that would be a much better way to discuss the charity.’

  ‘So you agree to allow my driver to pick you up and bring you back here?’

  ‘I do. Thank you, Mr Aguilar.’

  ‘Didn’t I already tell you to call me Marco?’ he answered, with a smile in his voice.

  All Grace knew right then was that her parents would have a fit if they knew she was even considering going to a strange man’s house in a foreign country in the middle of the day—even if that stranger was an internationally known entrepreneur. But then they were always so over-protective. She’d literally had to steal her freedom to leave home. Even when she’d made the decision to go to Africa to visit the children’s charity she worked for in London she’d had to stand her ground with them …

  ‘You can’t keep me wrapped up in cotton-wool for ever, you know,’ she’d argued. ‘I’m twenty-five years old and I want to see some of the world for myself. I want to take risks and learn by my mistakes.’

  ‘Grace?’

  Frowning, and with her heart beating a rapid tattoo inside her chest, she realised that Marco Aguilar was waiting for her reply. ‘I’m still here … I suppose I ought to give you my address if you’re sending a car for me?’

  ‘That would definitely be a good start,’ he agreed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THEY called them casas antigas in Portugal … manor-houses and stately homes. Grace’s eyes widened more and more the further Marco’s chauffeur Miguel drove them up the long sweeping drive that had met them the moment he’d pressed the remote device in the car to open the ornate electronic gates at the entrance. As they drove past the colonnade of tall trees lining the way she caught sight of the palatial colonial-style house they were heading towards, with its marble pillars glistening in the afternoon sunshine. She stared in near disbelief, murmuring, ‘My God …’ beneath her breath.

  Inevitably she thought of the ramshackle building that housed the orphanage back in Africa, and was struck dumb by the heartbreaking comparison to the dazzling vision of nineteenth-century architecture she was gazing at now. Did Marco Aguilar live here all by himself? she wondered. Just the thought seemed preposterous.

  The smiling chauffeur in his smartly pressed black trousers and pristine white shirt opened the Jaguar door at her side to let her out, and as Grace stepped down onto the gravel drive the scent of heady bougainvillaea mingled with the heat of the day to saturate her senses. Lifting her sunglasses up onto her head, she glanced back at the house and with a jolt of surprise saw Marco, standing on one of the wide curving upper steps, waiting. ‘Olá!’ He raised a hand, acknowledging her with a brief wave.

  He wore khaki-coloured chinos and a white T-shirt that highlighted his athletic, muscular torso, and his stance was much more at ease than when she’d seen him yesterday. Her trepidation at speaking with him again eased slightly … but only slightly.

  When she reached the level just below where he stood, he held out his hand to warmly enfold her palm in his. He smiled. ‘We meet again.’

  His touch submerged Grace in a shockwave of heated sensation that rendered her unable to reply immediately.

  This is terrible, she thought, panicking. How am I supposed to sound at all competent and professional and say what I want to say if I’m completely thrown off-balance by a simple handshake?

  ‘Thanks for sending the car for me,’ she managed. ‘This is such a beautiful house.’ Quickly retrieving her hand, she tried hard to make her smile relaxed to disguise her unexpectedly strong reaction to his touch.

  ‘I agree. It is. Why don’t you come inside and see it properly?’ he invited.

  If Grace had felt overwhelmed at the imposing façade of Marco’s house, then she was rendered almost speechless by the opulence and beauty of the interior. A sea of marble floor and high intricate ceilings greeted her over and over again as her host led her through various reception rooms to what appeared to be a much less ostentatious and intimate drawing room. Elegant couches and armchairs encircled a large hand-knotted Persian rug in various exquisite shades of red, ochre and gold, whilst open French doors revealed a wide balcony overlooking landscaped gardens stretching right down to the sea. This time it was the bewitching fragrance of honeysuckle drifting into the room that fell like soft summer rain onto Grace’s already captivated senses. She was utterly enchanted.

  ‘Do you want to sit outside on the balcony? I trust you are wearing suncream on that delicate pale skin of yours?’

  ‘I’m well protected—and, yes … I would very much like to sit outside.’

  Settling herself beneath a generously sized green and gold parasol in a comfortable rattan chair, Grace glanced out over the lush landscaped gardens in front of her and sighed. ‘What an amazing view … your own private paradise on earth. I hope you regularly get to share it with your friends. It would be a crime not to. I bet you must really love living here?’

  As he dropped down into a chair o
pposite her at the mosaic tiled table a myriad of differing emotions seemed to register on her host’s handsome face and she didn’t see one that reflected pleasure.

  ‘Unfortunately I probably don’t appreciate it as much as I should, seeing as I am not here very often,’ he said.

  ‘But you do originally come from here don’t you …? From the Algarve I mean?’ The impetuous question was out before she could check it, and straight away she saw that Marco was irked by it.

  ‘Now you are sounding like one of those too-inquisitive reporters again. By the way … where did you hear that I’d grown up in an orphanage?’

  Swallowing hard, Grace sensed hot colour suffuse her. ‘I didn’t hear it directly … I mean … the person who said it wasn’t talking to me. I just happened to overhear a conversation he was having with someone else in a café I was sitting in.’

  ‘So it was a local man?’

  ‘Yes. He sounded very admiring about what you’d achieved … he wasn’t being disrespectful in any way.’

  ‘And when you heard that I was due to visit the Algarve, and that I was an orphan, you thought you would take the opportunity to petition my help for your orphans in Africa?’

  ‘Yes … I’m sure you’d have done the same in my position.’

  ‘Are you?’

  Folding his arms, Marco looked to be pondering the assumption—not without a hint of sardonic humour, Grace noted.

  ‘Perhaps I would and perhaps I wouldn’t. Anyway, I think we should talk a little more in depth about what you came here for … get down to the details, hmm?’

  ‘Of course.’ Relieved that her admission about hearing a chance remark hadn’t prejudiced him against talking to her some more, she lifted her gaze and forced herself to look straight back into the compelling hooded dark eyes. ‘But I just want you to know that this isn’t the sort of thing I do every day … spontaneously railroading someone like you into giving their help, I mean. When I’m working at the charity’s office in London I have to be completely professional and adhere to strict rules. We either do a blanket mailshot of people likely to make donations, or once in a while I might get the chance to ring somebody who’s known for being charitable and talk to them personally.’